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Pink sleeve-shaped kapa fragment from Hawaii, possibly a kahili wrapper. Fragment embossed with star-shaped watermarks. Kahili are poles topped with bundles of feathers and were a symbol of high status and royalty in Hawaii. Kapa (the Hawaiian word for tapa) is a cloth made from the inner bark of trees and is widely used in the Pacific for clothing and bedding, as well as secular, sacred, and ceremonial uses.
tapa (bark cloth)
tapa (bark cloth)
Original To Stephen Phillips House (Salem, Mass.),
Unknown
Pacific Island Group
4 3/8 (W) (inches)
Gift of the Stephen Phillips Memorial Charitable Trust for Historic Preservation
2006.44.3648
Full digital version on Google Play https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=IKgxAQAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&output=reader&authuser=0&hl=en
Hawaii (United States)
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